


Wick: a The Secret Garden fusion

by allthebros



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: (really a graphic but you know), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fanart, M/M, Modern Royalty, Sort Of, The Secret Garden fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 23:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20016289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthebros/pseuds/allthebros
Summary: Patrick inherits a garden. Jonny knows how to make it grow.(a little graphic and a short intro)





	Wick: a The Secret Garden fusion

**Author's Note:**

> Made for the reel hawks fest. This is only, mostly meant to be a graphic/fanart, but it also grew a little introdution and blurb that I felt like sharing. Maybe one day, it'll grow a whole story. (pun intended)
> 
> Thanks to sorrylatenew, runphoebe, and cooliofoolios for their feedback and support <333

**BLURB**

Patrick’s parents died when he was very young. He lives in Florida with his paternal grandparents and his sickly sister, and manages the family car dealership. One day, his estranged, wealthy grandmother’s lawyer shows up to let him know she has died and has left him everything. Absolutely everything. Including the family manor (and the title that goes along with it) in upstate New York. Still recovering from a car accident that’s left him limping, he goes north to take possession of his inheritance. There, he meets Jonny, the gardener and landscape designer his grandmother hired before her death. Together, they discover Patrick’s mother’s little garden, the one she grew as a young girl, tucked away at the back of the manor’s grounds, overgrown and unloved for many years. A garden is only a garden, Patrick knows. It can’t heal old (and new) wounds, or soothe deep rooted anger, or bring back a mother from the dead. But maybe working to restore it side by side with someone careful and beautiful—who carries his own hurts, who knows how to make green things grow—maybe, that can help. 

**”COLD OPEN”**

Near the small garden door, his mother planted a white chrysanthemum bush.

“Truth,” is what Jonny says the first time he sees the flowers, soft under his breath like a habit, and with that certain but careful way he has of touching things with his fingertips that hooks Patrick’s attention every single time. 

Truth.

Well, the truth is: he doesn’t give much of a shit what old, boring Victorians had to say to each other through plants because they were too chickenshit to use their words. A plant is a plant and a flower is a flower and a garden is just a garden. It doesn’t fix things. It doesn’t fix anything. Just like a manor and a title and money don’t make up for neglect and absence and betrayal. 

And a garden is not a mother. 

But he’s not a fucking coward so he can say that the truth is also this:

When he’s sent to Misselthwaite Manor to take possession of his inheritance everybody agrees he is the most annoyed-looking heir they’ve ever seen. It’s true, too. He is. Also true: when the lawyer from New York tells him his grandmother has died, Patrick doesn’t feel a single thing. In fact, ‘good riddance’ sticks in his mind and in his mouth with a ferocity and bitterness he hasn’t felt in many years.

He bites on the comment and shifts his weight to his good leg. The shop’s empty of customers, the day breezy and warm. A perfect early March day in Florida, with air flowing in from the outside and sun glinting off the shined chromed of the used cars in the lot out front.

He’s very tempted to get it over and done with at the front desk, but his right leg is begging him for a rest. In the old office, the metal shelves around the room are full of boxes and paperwork, the laminate on the old desk is chipping in places, and the industrial carpet is stained and threadbare. Patrick doesn’t think this conversation deserves a better setting. He’s already thought about her more than she’s ever thought about him or his sister. He kicks a box to hold the door open as he limps with his cane around the desk and lets himself fall into the chair with a loud groan.

The lawyer walks into the cramped space, face red, his suit pressed and expensive, collar wet with sweat, too thick for Florida heat.

Patrick gestures to the other chair in the room. “Let’s have it, then.” 

She died in her sleep, apparently. Painless, quiet. Better than what she deserved. Better than what her daughter got. She closed her eyes and just… didn’t open them again. The lawyer tells him this with a careful tone of voice and with a gentleness like somehow Patrick is supposed to give a shit.

“You could have told me all this on the phone,” Patrick says.

The lawyer—Patrick doesn’t remember his name on purpose—shakes his head. “There are formalities that can only be discussed in person.”

Patrick straightens in his chair, tries to stretch his bad leg in the small space under the desk. “Look,” he says, trying to calibrate his voice into the tone he uses with customers, “I can make this easy for you. I’m grateful you took the time to bring me the news, though, like I said, you could have just called. We won’t be attending the funeral, and we won’t be pressing for money or whatever you’re worried about which I’m sure is the real reason you’re here. My grandmother… she didn’t care. I don’t know if you know this, but her and my grandfather disinherited my mother when she married my dad. We’ve literally never heard from her. Not when we were born, not when their own daughter died—they didn’t even come to the funeral. We didn’t hear from them afterwards either. No calls on birthdays, no money when my sister got sick. Nothing. Ever. When my grandfather died, we found out about it through the papers, and no one called to invite us to a funeral we would not have gone to anyway because who goes to a funeral for a perfect stranger, blood-related or not. So I really don’t see why this time it’s any different, and why you insisted on coming here all the way from New York. If you’re worried about any of us making a move for the money or whatever, I can sign any paper you want to say we won’t. We don’t want anything from her.” He slides a hand along his thigh to massage the muscles over the knee.

“Then this is going to be… awkward,” the lawyer says with a grimace.

“Why?”

“Because, Mr. Kane, the reason I am here today concerns Lady Stutz’s will.”

Patrick shifts in his chair. It’s starting to get stuffy in here, even with the draft from outside, and his leg is throbbing. He resists the urge to check his phone to see if it’s time to take his painkillers. “What of it?” he says, instead.

“She left you everything.”

Patrick freezes. Looks up from where he was readjusting himself, chair creaking under him. “What?”

The lawyer folds his hands over the briefcase in his lap, more proper and at ease than he’s seemed since he arrived in the Kane’s car dealership only ten minutes ago. “Had there been no will, inheritance law would have made you the heir no matter what, you being the closest and oldest relative. But there was a will, and inheritance law has changed in recent decades. She could have left her assets to any person, or charity, estate, fund, etcetera of her choice. Her Ladyship, however, did not. She left everything to you, Mr. Kane. That is to say, the estate, the manor, the money, the stables, any number of charitable organizations and philanthropic endeavours—we can go over the details in a moment—and, as a matter of course, her title.”

Patrick blinks. “What?”

“You are now Patrick Timothy Kane the second, Lord of Misselthwaite Manor,” the lawyer says, slow like Patrick is too.

The Florida sun shines outside, palm trees sway in the breeze, and inside his stuffy used car dealership Patrick blinks again. 

“... What?”

**Author's Note:**

> ([read/see the post on tumblr](https://allthebros.tumblr.com/post/186611063758/wick-a-1988-the-secret-garden-fusion-for))


End file.
